


Ascending to Godhood

by WolfenM



Series: Gamer's Choice [1]
Category: Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Fix-It, Gen, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-16 19:13:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3499745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfenM/pseuds/WolfenM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dragons of the Summer Flame, the gods have agreed to leave the world, and Raist is leaving with Paladine. But is Raist really going where he thinks he is? There's a reason why Raist's eyes are the shape they are -- and his surname is Majere ....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ascending to Godhood

**Author's Note:**

> **SPOILERS:** This story contains spoilers about the fate of Raistlin durng the Fifth Age, as well as for The Soulforge and Brothers in Arms, and draws upon information from the original Chronicles and the Twins trilogy.
> 
>  **DISCLAIMER:** Raistlin Majere, Fizban, Lunitari, Caramon Majere, Astinus, Gilean, Roerx, Flint, tanis Half-Elven, Kitiara, Nuitari, Solinari, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, kender, Palin, Silvara, Utha, Goldmoon, Riverwind, Laurana, Sturm, Steel, Tika, Crysania, Huma, Majius, Takhisis, Krynn, Dragonlance, Wizards of the Coast, Magic: The Gathering, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. © 2009 Wizards. All Rights Reserved. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This site may use the trademarks and other intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast LLC, which is permitted under Wizards' Fan Site Policy@. For example, DUNGEONS  & DRAGONS®, D&D®, PLAYER'S HANDBOOK 2®, and DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE® are trademark[s] of Wizards of the Coast and D&D® core rules, game mechanics, characters and their distinctive likenesses are the property of the Wizards of the Coast. For more information about Wizards of the Coast or any of Wizards' trademarks or other intellectual property, please visit their website at please visit their website at [www.wizards.com](http://www.wizards.com).
> 
>  **Notes:** This story was originally posted at deviantART in July of 2011. It takes place directly after Dragons of the Summer Flame. Caramon is still alive, as are Tika and Palin, but Tanis and Tas are newly dead, having joined Sturm and Flint on the other side.
> 
> I consider what was written in The Soulforge to be the be-all, end-all on Raistlin's life before & including his test in the Tower of High Sorcery. I do not choose to recognize the War of Souls trilogy (even if I do appreciate the Raist-bits), primarily because I do not like the new take on the gods that it proclaims at its end (much too biblical for my liking, if you must know). This story does not recognize the "High God", and maintains that Paladine and the others can—and do—create other worlds besides Krynn. And Takhi doesn't leave the gods in order to take over the newly-abandoned Krynn. And I know Wies and Hickman have said there's nothing to Raist's last name being Majere, but this is fanfic, not official -- I do what I want! ;P

 

* * *

Raistlin had no idea creating a new world would be so difficult.

  
Oh, it wasn't like he thought he could snap his fingers, and it would be done. Magic didn't work that way, and wasn't this a form of magic? No, he knew that there would have to be careful measurements of matter and time, that the "how" of it all must be well thought out.

  
He just didn't think it was going to require a _committee_.

  
He had considered going off to make a world of his own. But then _she_ came to him, and showed him what he had only vaguely seen in Caramon's eyes once. No, he was no God of Creation. He was the God of _Time_ , Master of the Past and the Present.

  
And the Future, or so Lunitari had told him.

  
She would always be there to guide him like that. Even if he had decided to go off and start his own world, he wouldn't do it without her. She was his wife, insofar as gods had mates. She always had been, really, even when he had loved Crysania. Lunitari was an understanding god-wife. She had firmly believed that, no matter the distraction, Raistlin's path would always lead him back to her.

  
He had left Crysania behind on Krynn, along with his nephew Palin, whom he loved like a son. Maybe someday he would see them again, and he would welcome them with the love he'd finally found inside him. But he was bound by a different kind of love to his Red Goddess. His love for Crysania was the love of adolescence, in a way, though he had been twenty-eight when they had met. She was the kind of love you had when you were still discovering yourself, were still needy and selfish and immature. He would always remember it wistfully, but he would not pine over "could have been"s — it wasn't in his nature. He understood that now. Lunitari had helped him with that, too.

  
He liked to rewatch that day again and again. The one where he'd claimed his place in the universe — not for his own ego's sake, but because that was the day when his path and hers truly became one. It was the happiest moment of his existence — and as the God of Time, he could relive it as often as he wished ....  


c==========={o

After his death, Raistlin's soul followed after Fizban, assuming that the god-in-disguise was taking him to the land of the dead, as the god had done for Flint. Raistlin hadn't imagined it would take so _long_ , though. Then a thought occured to him: was that not where they were going? Had he not earned a place there?

  
"Where are you taking me?" he finally asked.

  
Fizban stopped and raised a perplexed brow. "Where do you _think_?"

  
"Well, I _thought_ we were going to the land of the dead ..."

  
Fizban snorted. "What makes you think you're dead, son?" Fizban asked him. "Didn't you feel your body's life-force when you were down there last time?"

  
"But ... I thought that was just temporary?"

  
"Hmph! Everything and nothing in this universe is temporary! Did you think we were just letting you off for good behavior? If you're so certain you're dead, when precisely did you die?"

  
Raistlin blinked. "When Tak—"

  
Fizban let out a laugh, and Raistlin wondered, shuddering at the chill going down his spine, if the shrill sound was the same as what others heard when he himself laughed.

  
"When my sister killed you? So what about when she brought you back to life, boy? You died and lived again a hundred times. Just like me. Just like her. Just like every other being that was ever born of Chaos."

  
Not really sure what the god meant, Raistlin tried again. "You still haven't answered me. Where are we going?"

  
"To meet with the other gods, of course! The new site's a bit far, I'll admit, but, well, we'll need room for a whole new world, right? Still, I think we're almost there ...." And Fizban said no more as they made their way to find his god-kin.

  
When they arrived, the gods were already in council, discussing what kind of world they wanted to create this time. The council reminded Raist of the Conclave, with the Gods of Light seated where the white robes would have been, the Gray where the red would have been, and the Dark where the black robes would normally sit. The discussion was a relaxed one, with the Queen of Darkness apparently so bored she lay sound asleep with her head in Nuitari's lap. The god of the black moon stroked her hair as one might pet a dog. Raist had had a vision once, of Nuitari holding a crystal orb that showed a five-headed dragon in its reflective surface. Raist hadn't remembered that until this moment. He thought of his own dragon orb, and realised with a shudder the truth of things. Like his sister Kitiara, Takhisis liked to believe she was in charge ....

  
Raistlin shook the thought away and turned his attention to the rest of the room. The gods lounging in their seats greeted Paladine — father, brother, friend, and even enemy — with hearty greetings and playful teasing. Still guised as Fizban, Paladine took a seat among the Gods of Light. Then he proceeded to take off his shoes and rub his feet.

  
Raistlin looked about, wondering what he should do. Was he supposed to know where to go now? Shouldn't souls know how to get to their final rest? Realising just how tired he was (and wondering how a spirit could even _be_ tired), he just sat down on the floor right where he'd stood. There was an empty seat among the gods, and he looked at it longingly while wondering which of the gods were missing. He started to name the ones he saw in his head, taking a roster.

  
Fizban snapped his head up, brow raised. "What's the matter with you? Suddenly you're too good to sit with the rest of us??" He jerked his head at the seat next to him. "Siddown, Majere!"

  
Raistlin started. At first he thought Paladine was speaking to him — he seemed to be looking right at him — but then he remembered the god who was his namesake. He looked about, realising that this was the god that was missing, and curious to know what he looked like.

  
There was no one behind him. Fizban _was_ looking at _him_.

  
His quick mind made a connection, one he promptly discarded. There was just no way ....

  
"Where shall I sit, old one?"

  
Fizban goggled. "I know you're not blind, my boy, even with those eyes. Sit, so we can get the ball rolling!"

  
A graceful, pale hand patted the empty seat. Raistlin's hourglass eyes followed the hand up the magenta-robed arm, to a face he knew, he felt, better than his twin, Caramon's.

  
"Come, beloved," she told him.

  
"Lunitari ..." he breathed.

  
She smiled at him, and as if she were a goddess of the sun rather than a moon, he felt a warmth flood through him. Had she returned his magic to him? Drawn to her as he had ever been, Raist seemed to practically float to her side. Once he was seated, she took his hand in hers.

  
"You confuse him, Paladine," she chastised the elder god. "He, as far as he has lived, is only newly a god. You hold memories of an existence he has not lived yet."

  
Fizban eyed Raist with a look that seemed both proudly paternal and pityingly sad. "Quite right, quite right. Perhaps we should tell him this story first. Besides, I sense you could all use a break from the hard work you've been doing in this council!" He meant that last to be sarcastic, but it was lost on most of the gods, who cheered and called for ale.

  
"Gilean!" The neutral god snapped to attention, glaring at Paladine for interrupting his reading.

  
"Gilean, your 'father' needs to borrow the book, for a moment." Paladine held out his hand, and Gilean grudgingly obeyed.

  
Raistlin watched the exchange, puzzled. "I thought Gilean was your brother, not your son."

  
"Hah! I didn't say he was _my_ son; he's _yours_. Well, sort of. Really, boy, did you think the gods, for whom time has next to no meaning, have family trees like humans do? Our relationships are quite a bit more complicated than that. I'm reminded of a song I once heard ...." And Fizban launched into a lively rendition of a tune that began with the phrase " _I'm my own grandpa!_ "

  
At least, he _tried_ to. Lunitari cut him short halfway through the third line with an impatient "Give him the damn book already!" She snatched the text out of the old man's hands and gently handed them to Raist with a loving smile.

  
Raist hardly noticed it for a moment, so entranced was he by her loveliness. It abated his hunger for knowledge. He thought he could spend the rest of eternity staring at her glowing skin, her shining hair that seem to hold the universe in its blackness. She tapped the book with a finger, drawing his reluctant attention to it.

  
And then he fully realised what he had in his hands. Gilean's book. The one that held all knowledge in its pages, what took hundreds of books in Astinus' library to hold and still more knowledge besides. Hands shaking, he reverently opened the cover.

  
He gasped. The writing was Astinus'! No one else had ever had a script that came close to matching the man's perfect lines. He turned up to Lunitari, a question on his lips. She silenced him with a finger, pressing the words back.

  
"Just read," she told him, and he obeyed.

  
He couldn't say how much time passed as he read. Hours, days, mere minutes. Did it matter, when eternity was now his? For that was what he had gleaned from the book, the scant understanding that what he had sought had actually always been his.

  
"Remember that vision Caramon gave you, where your constellation was the only one in the sky, and it was an hourglass? That wasn't a new constellation, my love," Lunitari told him when he pressed her for confirmation that he had read and understood Gilean's book correctly. "You are the Master of the Past and Present—and Future as well. The God of Time."

  
"But ... then where is that hourglass? I had never seen it outside of that vision!"

  
"And the dragons of Takhisis and Paladine once disappeared from the sky in your lifetime, when they came to Krynn. How could the hourglass be in the sky if you were down there?"

  
"But ... Majere has been known for eons! And I'd never heard of there being an hourglass constellation in the past! And there are other gods associated with time—"

  
"Well, with your natural thirst for knowledge, we had to keep you from learning too much about yourself, or it might have affected the choices you made. As for Majere's previous existence, that's the trick to being the God of Time, isn't it? You didn't have to have been born in the past, because you can exist anywhen. You are immune to paradox. And in the realm of the Gods, time isn't so fixed. We exist in all moments simultaneously. Time is a river that flows around us, in a circle. From our point of reference, outside it, we can see all of it at pretty much at once. But most gods cannot alter what, by Krynn's terms, has already been done. Only _you_ may change the flow of the river — you, and your children, to a lesser extent. Gilean is our son, Raistlin. He is Astinus as a god. Astinus is his mortal self, born to us once when we took mortal form. Which is another reason why your constellation is almost never seen — you spend _much_ of your time amongst mortals."

  
Raistlin nodded; that was what the book had essentially told him. His life as Raistlin Majere had been his true life as a mortal, where he had ascended to godhood by the evolution of his being. According to the book, all the gods had come about that way, by proving themselves to be beings of great vision and power, be it for good or evil. They became legends, and as legends, became gods. And once they became gods, they existed in all times, and helped create the world. By mortal, linear terms, it was impossible — but they were no longer mortal, and no longer lived linearly. Because of that, it was Majere's job to see to it that they didn't rewrite history over and over, eventually descending the world back into the Chaos from which it came. They could only help, not violate free will. This was why Gilean had become a god — to help Majere keep track of what history was "real" and what just "might have been".

  
So once Majere ascended, he went back in time and made for himself an avatar, much as Paladine had done when he walked among the Heroes of the Lance as Fizban. Why? Because they had once lived as mortals on Krynn, and felt as much of a need to insure its welfare as any other being. So Majere had become Magius, and aided Huma, who in death merged with the Silver Dragon, and ascended as Paladine. And the gods could infuse mortals with a fragment of their own essence as well, so that they lived a life as a new soul. His own sister, Kitiara, was a frament of Takhisis, his friend Sturm a part of Paladine, and Flint part of of Reorx. Fistandantilus had been the darkness Majere had cast from himself, so that he could become a God of Light, which was the only way he could attain godhood and still maintain the Balance.

  
And, thinking on that, Raistlin realised something _was_ missing from himself. The very evil that had attached itself to him all those years ago was now gone again, presumably sent back in time to be Fistandantilus. And yet, he realised that it had all been necessary. If Raistlin hadn't walked in Nuitari's darkness for a time, Krynn would have become unbalanced and fallen to Takhisis. And having walked that path, Raistlin could understand it, and know how to prevent it from devouring Krynn. He knew how to maintain the balance throughout time. As Par Salian had apparently said of him, the trials he had endured had served to shape him into a weapon for good, the fires of pain forged his soul. While he my have come to regret some of the things he had done, he knew that, even with the chance to do it all over again, which he had now, he could not. What had happened had been necessary. It was not that he hated evil, for he knew it had its place, but rather that he had accepted a place among the light, and had his own duties now to serve it, as he had once served the magic ....

  
He looked up at Lunitari and smiled, truly smiled for the first time since before his Test. He basked in her beauty for a long moment, and thought of how, in his time on Krynn, to see such beauty was a rare thing. His hourglass eyes had ensured that, wherever he looked, he saw naught but decay. This had played a large part in feeding the bitterness that had grown in his heart, driving him into the dark. He turned to Paladine, struck by a sudden thought.

  
"How can I be rid of these eyes now? Surely it is within the power of a god?"

  
It was Lunitari who answered. "Beloved, you need not be rid of them, for they may serve you well!"

  
He looked at the river of time surrounding them, looked on the lives that withered and dies before him. "How? How can it help me to see no beauty, only death?"

  
"Is that truly all you see? Look long and hard."

  
He did as she bade him. He chose a flower to gaze at, for a brief moment enjoying its beauty before it faded. He watched as it shrivel and sink into the ground from which it sprang. He was about to turn away, when something new and green poked its way through the ground of the forest floor. Now two flowers withered and died. Now three. And now an animal came along, and died among the flowers — and from the spot a whole garden came and went, and now a tree ...

  
"You never looked long enough to see what came after death," she told him. "Know now that you can see what others cannot. You can see the long-term fruits of our labors. You can see the breathe of life, that which eluded you so, as it inhales and exhales and inhales again. Beauty is not constant, but neither is death. They dance together, as good and evil do, creating and destroying and building again. This is movement; see why I revere it."

  
He could, for while he had to choose to the path of light in order to be with her, he understood and respected neutrality. After all, wasn't he, in his own way, struggling to maintain it? Weren't they all truly neutral?

  
Paladine interrupted his ruminations. "I suppose we can get down to business now? We have a new world to create!"

  
"But ... what about Krynn?"

  
"There comes a time when every parent must leave its young to fend for itself. We made a deal with Chaos, and unless we want to destroy all that we worked for, we have to let go. Krynn's story, as far as we are concerned, is done. Although you'll be going back, won't you boy?" Fizban added with a wink.

  
Raistlin understood; he had to go do all those things Majere had done. "What about my brother?" he asked, thinking suddenly of the other Majere.

  
"Oh, he'll be along. He'll be a god of giants in the new world, I suspect. And your other friends, Tanis, Tas, Flint, they will all have a place as well. In fact, since we have to restructure anyway, you _could_ shift your allegiance back to neutrality, lad ..."

  
Raistlin nodded. With his friends, there would be plenty of more of Light and Dark for the new world. He would fulfill his role in the capacity of Light for Krynn, because that was what was needed. But for the new world, he envisioned a new troika of gods, like Luni and her brothers Solinari and Nuitari, with Caramon as Light, Kitiara as Dark, and Raist himself as Nuetral.

  
As the talks commenced, Raist took Luni's hand in his. He realised then and there, feeling the warmth in her hand, that when he had been holding the staff of Magius, he had been holding a part of her. She had put a part of herself into the tree from which the wood of the staff had come, back when, as Magius, he had first created it. She had seen to it, with Solinari's aid, that Raistlin would inherit the staff he himself had created, and through it would stop at nothing to find his way back to her. What he had thought he had done for greed of power he now understood he did for love of her.

  
She was all the power he needed.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously I had theories about Raist, regarding his name & his staff, that did not pan out in the Fifth Age. I feel like an opportunity was lost, so I wanted to explore it, and let it exist at least *somewhere*. It seemed to me in _Brothers in Arms_ that he was _in_ love with Lunitari .... 
> 
> You can see an illustration I did of Luni and Raist [at deviantART](http://wolfenm.deviantart.com/art/OLD-Dragonlance-Luni-Raist-243835434).
> 
> ###########  
> If you've enjoyed my writing, I invite you to explore my original fantasy storyverse, [Gaiankind](http://gaiankind.com)! You can even find Gaiankind stories for free [here](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Gaiankind) on AO3!


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